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CHAPTER TEN Lebanon and the Demise of the Begin-Sharon Cabinet Sharon now used a new language of opacity, clearly understood by Washington, Moscow, and some Arab leaders-but not by the Israeli and Arab peoples. In opaque language, he extended Israel's nuclear threat over the occupied territories as a whole, and gave up the last resort option. His forceful-and highly controversial-personality played a role as an important constant. Sharon believed that his new language had a fair degree of credibility, and he hoped that the combination would establish him firmly as Begin's successor. As he saw it, Israel needed to strengthen its credibility immediately by way of an Israeli-initiated limited war to destroy the PLO's II state within a state" in Lebanon, in the framework of his "grand" strategy . His ultimate goal was to establish a friendly regime in Beirut which could control the Palestinians in Lebanon, and under certain circumstances even send troublesome Palestinians back to Jordan. He saw this as a way to eliminate the risks and damages emanating from Palestinian guerrilla warfare and Syrian II under the threshold" war-fighting doctrine. In fact, he argued that Jordan itself could be turned into a Palestinian, rather than a Hashemite, state, thus solving the problem of the Palestinian quest for self-determination. Palestinians under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza, territories that Likud believed belonged to Israel, would be asked to leave for their independent state if they did not like Israeli rule. Or they would be provoked to leave by an enhanced Israeli settlement effort in these areas, an effort made possible thanks to the changed strategic position of Israel in the region and vis-a-vis the Americans.1 Otherwise they could stay as loyal subjects. 185 186 The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East At the same time, Soviet-American rivalry could be mobilized within the context of President Ronald Reagan's efforts against the "Evil Empire," by inflicting a strike against pro-Soviet Syria. In this vein, a limited but public "memorandum on strategic cooperation," which mentioned the Russians by name as the common opponent, was signed by Washington and Jerusalem in November 1981 and was leaked to the Israeli press in December.2 This "grand design"-as its Lebanese element was later nicknamed by the Israeli press-required a direct military effort to push the Syrians out of Lebanon while inflicting a severe military blow on Assad's troops there.3 American Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who at first had endorsed the strategic memorandum, rejected it later, when Sharon's "grand" and rather autonomous design became more clear to Washington. But this only made the general even more ready to attack. According to Yosef Harif's February 1982 article in Ma'ariv, Sharon was explicit about a future action in Lebanon in a meeting with Senator John Glenn in mid-February 1982.' According to the well-informed Harif, Sharon's plans for Lebanon were much in defiance of what he termed "Weinberger's policy" in the Middle East. The main argument was directed against American weapon supplies to Saudi Arabia and Jordan; Syria was receiving modem weaponry from the Soviets, and Iraq was getting materiel from all sides (even if Saddam's war against Iran seemed to be mired in the marshes of the gulf). A pattern had been established: one radical regime in the region-Saddam's-should be strengthened against the more radical one-Khomeini's-in order to help defeat the totally uncompromising fanaticism of the latter. In general, the United States was responsible for growing Arab conventional power, which in tum upset Israel's own priorities, and at least indirectly protected the PLO in Lebanon. That tom country, lacking a central authority since the outbreak of a civil war in 1975, was controlled by competing non-Lebanese entities - the Palestinians and the Syrians, who were both competing with each other and committed to each other (in the sense that, under certain circumstances, one could involve the other against Israel). Thus the weak Lebanese state allowed the Palestinians almost complete freedom of action unless checked; the Palestinians could be used by-or in tum use-the Syrians, by attacking the Israelis from Palestinian bases in Lebanon. Israeli retaliations, on the ground or from the air, were usually censured by the United States. Thus Washington, in Sharon's view, allowed Lebanon to become a protected guerrilla base or...

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